​We watched a Netflix documentary tonight with popcorn and a blazing fire in our living room. It wasn’t a comedy, by a long stretch, but it was riveting.. I was sick with a cold that has been going around for ten days and as soon as I got well, Bob got it so we haven’t been out forever (or so it seems). We’ve watched so much TV it feels like our eyeballs are going to fall out!

The movie was the story of prisoners on death row and the families that were left behind from the bloodshed they had created. There was a man whose job it was to strap the death row prisoners down before their execution and then take them off the gurney at the end of the execution and send them to the funeral home. He looked at it as just another job. He did that more than 100 times .with out feeling. ​There was a woman prisoner that he assisted and that got to him. He finally understood they were human beings and the part he played in their dying. He quit and started another job (we don’t know what) but for the first time in his life, he felt real joy from the world !​​

He said he had always heard the expression “Live Your Dash" and never paid any attention to it. He went on to explain what that meant.

On your tombstone, there is your birth date, a dash , and then your date of death. It is up to us to live that dash to the fullest!

He also said the first time he heard birds sing was after he quit that job and took the time to look around, and actually listen to the birds. ​When we receive a diagnosis of any kind , when a car just misses us crossing the street, when a loved one is sick, we realize just how precious life becomes!! The dash is the juicy part, the part where we laugh with our friends, where we hold our kids hands, where we look at our mates in that special way. The dash is when we do a kindness for someone else, when we love an animal and let them lick us in the face. The dash is the living part, good and bad, the part where we hear the birds and smile at the beauty of the flowers or the mountains or the ocean. The part when when we say, I love you and mean it.

My family didn’t get to have enough dashes, so I want to remember that whenever I complain, grumble, disapprove of something, or forget to smile. Aging isn’t always easy but the alternative would be to take our dash away. We have to remember just because we’ve had a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year doesn’t mean we’ve had a bad life!

I want to “Live My Dash “with every ounce of joy I can find in my body!I hope we all do!